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We use matched employee-employer data from the UK to highlight the importance of social skills, including the ability to work well in a team and communicate effectively with co-workers, as a driver for individual wage growth for workers with few formal educational qualifications. We show that lower educated workers in occupations where social skills are more important experience steeper wage growth with tenure, and also higher early exit rates, than equivalent workers in occupations where social skills are less important. Moreover, the return to tenure in occupations where social skills are important is stronger in firms with a larger share of higher educated workers. We rationalize our findings using a model of wage bargaining with complementarity between the skills and abilities of less educated workers and the firm’s other assets.
Authors

Research Fellow London School of Economics
Philippe is an IFS Research Fellow, a Professor of Economics at LSE, at the College de France and at INSEAD, and a Fellow at the Econometric Society.

Antonin Bergeaud

CPP Co-Director
Richard is Co-Director of the Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy (CPP) and Senior Research Fellow at IFS.

CPP Co-Director
Rachel is Research Director and Professor at the University of Manchester. She was made a Dame for services to economic policy and education in 2021.
Working Paper details
- DOI
- 10.1920/wp.ifs.2023.2523
- Publisher
- Institute for Fiscal Studies
Suggested citation
Aghion, P et al. (2023). Social skills and the individual wage growth of less educated workers. 23/25. London: Institute for Fiscal Studies. Available at: https://ifs.org.uk/publications/social-skills-and-individual-wage-growth-less-educated-workers (accessed: 29 April 2025).
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